Gene Lyons: Much ado about nothing

4:14 PM,
Jan. 6, 2014

Written by

Gene Lyons

Moscow has always been hard on idealists. So it's no surprise to find the world-renowned civil libertarian Edward Snowden feeling shaky midway through his first Russian winter. In a televised Christmas message recorded by Britain's Channel 4, Snowden waxed alternately as grandiose and apocalyptic as a Dostoyevsky character.

On one hand, the former NSA analyst who stole a hoard of classified documents from the spy agency and passed them around to selected journalists sees himself as a world historical figure.